Film The Redcafe Movie review thread

I like Heat quite a bit... it's not the best film ever or anything, but grand all the same. But then, I thought MI:5 was bloody fantastic.

Michael Mann's best L.A film is Collateral at any rate.
 
I thought Bobby & Al were boring. Kilmer & Fitchner were better.

I also like Collateral. Haven't seen it in ages, mind.
 
Everybody loves Heat but Mann has done plenty better.

As for Trainwreck, how does it match up against Schumer's TV show?
 
Show's much better IMO. The best bits are sketch like, but it gets a bit lost in it's Apatowish rambling narrative. It's genuinely about 40 minutes too long. Does a romcom ever need to be over 2 hours?
 
I watched Heat again recently looking for something I must've missed the first time around, didn't find it. Just can't seem to give a shit about any of the characters.

Also saw 'Stir of Echoes', which I'd never seen before and quite enjoyed it. Not usually the type of movie I appreciate either, but thought it worked well.
 
Not a massive Michael Mann fan but I personally think that Heat is the great anti-action action film. A fine realisation of the folly of salvation through male agency, it superbly undercuts it's glamour with Ahabian dark romanticism. Brilliantly written in the same way that True Detective (for all it's praise) is horribly written.
 
Mockney said:
I think Heat's great, but I agree it's overrated. It's like the Scarface of cop films: Very good, but not the undisputed genre peak it's made out to be by the generation who watched it on video at Uni. If it hadn't been DeNiro & Pacino in their first screen sharing roles, that whole holding hands deathbed thing would've been hilariously corny.
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The ending is a stinker. Far better ending in the original version, they just changed it cos the remake had those two in it.
 
I re-watched Mulholland Drive recently. It is an excellent film and Naomi Watts was great in it. 9/10
 
Just watched the last 20 mins of Phantom Menace again for my sins. Urgh the pervy relationship between Anikin and Amidala (sp?). Seriously weird, but I'd have a go on Nat Portman tbf. Only bareback unlubed though. Maybe.
 
Snowpiercer

Finally got around to watching it. Am a fan a Joon-ho Bong, a seriously entertaining director. Did well with this movie. Would probably have been better in Korean as he's usually pretty funny but it's very hard to be very funny in a different language so it seems as if he skipped it for the most part. Didn't realize Kang-ho Song was in it. Also didn't know there was an Icelandic actor! (the bald headed maniac with the eggs).

Good thing about this movie is that they didn't go into details about how stuff worked. It would just annoy you because the idea in itself is silly and implausible. Overall a pretty good first time movie in English by an Asian director. It's hard to come from the Asian market into Hollywood. He sensibly only half-stepped into America with this flick. I definitely recommend it and I definitely think that some people will not enjoy it at all.
 
Ex Machina - Great film about AI, nuff said. 8/10

Avengers: Age of Ultron - Alright for a superhero flick but why do these films always have to be at least 30 minutes too long? Also had a bit of a Michael Bay feel towards the end, which isn't a good thing. 6/10

Slow West - Was alright, had higher expectations. Nicely shot though. 6.5/10

Coherence - A few friends come together for dinner and some weird stuff starts to happen to them due to some comet flying close to earth. An ok story about alternate universes with some of the most hilariously bad acting performances you will ever see. 6/10

Before I go to sleep - Great thriller starring Nicole Kidman about a woman that suffers from amnesia and only remembers everything for one day since something happened to her. Kidman is great as always. 7/10

John dies at the end - Horror/comedy about some new kind of drug that enhances your senses and opens portals to some very weird worlds. Started very promising but fizzled out towards the end. Could have been so much better if the humor hadn't been so absurd at times. 5.5/10

Mindscape - Thriller starring Mark Strong about a man who can access people's memories and has to investigate a troubled 16 year old girl that has gone on hunger strike. Had my hopes up for this one after reading the plot but alas, the story was pretty weak and the ending disappointing. 5.5/10
 
Mad Max Fury Road. A mad, pantomime action-spectacular. It's mercilessly short on characters and story development (no story/characters is infinitely better than crap story/characters). Instead we're presented a snapshot of a bizarre, macabre yet campy dystopian vision, bursting with elaborate design and character. Really enjoyable.

Whatever they did to the image (varispeeding frame rate, changing shutter angle etc?) gave the film a really stark and unique feel. (The Raid 2 did something similar, but it had no variety and I thought the footage ended up looking like the result of a poor rendering process.) Mad Max's image speeds and slows, stutters and smoothes from shot to shot and it really added to the staccato mayhem on the screen.
 
Amelie- started rewatching this after a long time. But had to turn it off after 20 minutes or so due to the constant voice over. The VO is never ending. Maybe on some other day, I might have enjoyed it.
 
entropy said:
Amelie- started rewatching this after a long time. But had to turn it off after 20 minutes or so due to the constant voice over. The VO is never ending. Maybe on some other day, I might have enjoyed it.
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Absolutely hated that film. The main character was insufferable.
 
Ouija
It's on Sky Prem at the mo'. Don't bother with it. So-and-so at best plot about an old ouija board found in a house that awakens old spirits and the predictably attractive group of teens who played the game have to figure out the mystery quickly before they are picked off one by one. Couple of 'jump scares' I guess, but the deaths are very tame and generally off camera and there's no explicit nudity. Or even moderate for that matter. Given how unintelligent and derivative the plot is, one or both of graphic violence and gratuitous sex scenes would have at least offset, or at worst distracted from, the plot failings. Safe, insipid and identikit. Don't bother.
3/10
 
A Touch of Sin presents the affects of Asian industrial brutality, showing individual acts of violence as mere symptoms of the inherent dehumanisation of modern Chinese society (or any society). A depressingly familiar story but with added wuxia/spaghetti western seasoning. A fine film.
 
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Ted 2 A bizarre interpolation of the civil rights movement in modern America as viewed through the eyes of talking teddy bear. The juxtaposition of pre 1970's social race politics alongside black cock jokes is both jarring and occasionally hilarious in both it's crassness and unintentional hypocrisy.
 
Jippy said:
Ouija
It's on Sky Prem at the mo'. Don't bother with it. So-and-so at best plot about an old ouija board found in a house that awakens old spirits and the predictably attractive group of teens who played the game have to figure out the mystery quickly before they are picked off one by one. Couple of 'jump scares' I guess, but the deaths are very tame and generally off camera and there's no explicit nudity. Or even moderate for that matter. Given how unintelligent and derivative the plot is, one or both of graphic violence and gratuitous sex scenes would have at least offset, or at worst distracted from, the plot failings. Safe, insipid and identikit. Don't bother.
3/10
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I refuse to watch anything under a 5.5 on IMDB. Usually it's utter shit so I'm glad I dodged a bullet with Oujia.
 
VorZakone said:
I refuse to watch anything under a 5.5 on IMDB. Usually it's utter shit so I'm glad I dodged a bullet with Oujia.
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Yeah let me or @pauldyson1uk watch this shit and spare you. Just can't imagine the director of such a film saying 'yeah, that's the film I wanted to make'. Bland, bland shit. Amazing how so many horror films can be so boring.
 
OldRed73 said:
My limit used to be 5 but then you realise there are less and less new films being made that are above even that - probably the reason why a lot of people are now discovering films from the 30s to 50s :)

Now watching The Vampire Bat from 1933 - these films are called classics for a reason
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Have you watched Nosferatu?
 
The Warriors (1979): 8/10

Never liked watching movies that old because of the slow pace but because I have a fascination for the gritty NY of the 70s and 80s I highly enjoyed watching it. Not only that, I thought the plot was fun as well, reminds me of the Purge in a way.
 
VorZakone said:
The Warriors (1979): 8/10

Never liked watching movies that old because of the slow pace but because I have a fascination for the gritty NY of the 70s and 80s I highly enjoyed watching it. Not only that, I thought the plot was fun as well, reminds me of the Purge in a way.
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Can you dig it?!

Good film with some great quotable lines
 
The Salvation (2014) - Classic style western with Mads Mikkelson and Cantona that's a bit too neat and predictable. It's impossible not to enjoy it though, seeing as it's a western with Mads Mikkelson and Cantona in it.
 
VorZakone said:
The Warriors (1979): 8/10

Never liked watching movies that old because of the slow pace but because I have a fascination for the gritty NY of the 70s and 80s I highly enjoyed watching it. Not only that, I thought the plot was fun as well, reminds me of the Purge in a way.
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You don't like old films of the pace?! Warriors is a classic. Don't compare it to the fecking Purge ffs.
 
Submarine - Richard Ayoade (2010)

Didn´t think I was going to like this very much but I was pleasantly surprised. The plot got a bit goopy and there were some glaring mistakes, but the direction was quite clever and creative which made it worth the watch. Sort of like a a British version of some coming-of-age Wes Anderson faire. The lead actor reminded me of a 21st century Malcom McDowell creation. Paddy Constantine had his typical shining role but was a too over the top to be very credible. Enjoyed the soundtrack by that Arctic Monkey geezer as well.

I think Richard Ayoade, with a great script, could do some fantastic things in the future.

7.5 cocks up
 
The abduction of Zack Butterfield - A US Army veteran abducts a fourteen year old boy in order to have sex with him.

Twist

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This is the abductor.

For some odd reason the teenage boy, instead of dancing with glee, still tries to escape. Awful film, with awful acting, quite offensively bad for such a potentially serious subject matter. 2/10

Young Adult - Charlize Theron desperately tries to win back a former boyfriend who has a wife and newborn baby. She ends up sleeping with Patton Oswalt in a scene that should be shown to beautiful women over and over again like the Ludovico technique in A Clockwork Orange. 6/10

These reviews - inane ramblings of someone who clearly needs to get laid. 80085/10
 
Glengarry Glen Ross

Really good movie that I'd been meaning to watch, good ensemble cast. Baldwin's cameo scene is absolutely fantastic, and sets the tone for the movie. Dialogue is fairly memorable - felt it sort of had a Tarantino vibe at times to it, albeit obviously without all the violence. Well worth the watch, though.

8/10
 
Cheesy said:
Glengarry Glen Ross

Really good movie that I'd been meaning to watch, good ensemble cast. Baldwin's cameo scene is absolutely fantastic, and sets the tone for the movie. Dialogue is fairly memorable - felt it sort of had a Tarantino vibe at times to it, albeit obviously without all the violence. Well worth the watch, though.

8/10
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Yeah I see what you mean with the Tarantino comparisons, at least his more recent ones, but Tarantino likes to use long dialogue scenes to crank up the pressure and tension before 'exploding' in a sense. This is a more relaxed and calm way to use dialogue. Great film.
 
Brwned said:
Philomena - Great stuff; the chemistry between Steve Coogan and Judi Dench is perfect, it covers a serious matter without being in any way heavy-handed or overly sentimental and the 90 minutes fly by.
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I just saw this recently. Agree with everything you said. the time flew by.
Judi Dench as an Irish mammy was great. "fecking idiot" :lol:
 
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